Family Wars
by Aryelweb
Summary: The family's obsessed with the god Zamorak, but young Jasmine prefers Saradomin. When her mother burns her favourite possession, the cloak, Jasmine completely overreacts and runs away to join Castle Wars, to rub it in their converting faces.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Runescape belongs to Jagex, but the family belongs to moi. :3

R + R please, this is one of the stories I want reviews on. No flames, coz I'll get sad. :( Constructive criticism is VERY welcome though!

Also, for some reason, I keep referring to Jasmine as Madison… no idea why, so if you see a "Madison" in there somewhere for no apparent reason, please point it out to me!

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As soon as she got home from the small building her parents called school, Jasmine stuffed her blue hood and cloak in a cardboard box, and shoved it under her bed. Any minute now her not-so-happy mother would come home from work, and her father from shopping. Thank god today was Wednesday, the day for shopping; if Jasmine had to sneak her Saradomin cloak upstairs one more time…

The family was a supporter of Zamorak, and, very stubbornly, tried to get Jasmine to think the same.

'Can't they just be like other parents?' she asked herself. 'They don't care which God _they_ like.'

Though it was true that her best friend Olivia's parents weren't exactly like that either, though more because of Castle Wars rather than actual gods.

Castle Wars… yes! Next week, she'd be old enough to go! She would be fifteen, and be able to join Olivia there… if Olivia was still doing it. Olivia got bored easily and quickly. Knowing her, she would have changed her mind and gone back home without telling anyone.

Jasmine tore her elastic out of her hair, she hated having her black, though oily and dull, hair up. She shoved it into the drawer on her bedside table, before stepping her way through her incredibly messy room (her Saradomin souvenirs were the only things she put away), and went down the ladder to the second floor. As soon as she was out of the attic room, she walked downstairs to meet her mother coming home.

'Is your father here yet?' her mother asked. 'He said he'd get you some zit cream… wait, they don't sell it here, do they?'

Jasmine shook her head, and frowned at the last comments, half-embarrased.

'Right,' her mother said. 'I'll be in the kitchen if you want me.'

'Fine,' answered Jasmine. 'I'm just going out. Do you want me to get anything for dinner?'

'Can you get some raw chicken?'

'Yes mum.'

'Good. See you when you come back.'

They lived in Varrock, right on the Southern gate. The house, the one with the vegetables at the back, where the HQ of the Phoenix gang was just up the street, but they had worked on it to fit their family. Up the other street our house sat on the corner of was the General Store; the market, if you will. Then there was the fountain at the middle of Varrock which constantly needed to be refilled since everyone was fond of filling their buckets there.

Jasmine walked into the General store with a pouch full of gold coins, GP. She looked around the crowded store, then spotted the shop assistant. Threading her way through the crowd, she grabbed his apron to get his attention, and asked, 'Do you have any raw chicken?'

'I'm afraid not,' he shook his head.

_I'll have to get it from Lumbridge,_ she thought. She thanked the shop assistant, then went out.

Then she suddenly realised something. _I forgot my Saradomin cloak!_ She thought. _If mum and dad find it they'll burn it!_

She walked home briskly, trying to act as casual as normal. _Dammit! How could I forget?_

She had already thought of her excuse for coming home early. She had forgotten her bag as well, she would hide her pouch of GP on her person and pretend it was in her bag, and grab her cloak at the same time and hide it. Jasmine took her pouch off her belt and shoved it down her shirt, and it was hidden in the baggy material.

Nevertheless, it had attracted a few stares. 'What?' she snapped. They shrugged and went back to their daily business, caught.

Jasmine arrived at the front gate and let herself in. She walked up to the house, unlocked the door, and went in, to see her mother sitting on an armchair, who looked surprised.

'Why are you home early?' she asked. 'You've only been gone five minutes.'

'I forgot my bag,' replied Jasmine. It wasn't exactly a lie.

'It's on the table,' said her mother, who nodded towards the table.

There was that plan gone.

'It wasn't there before,' said Jasmine, giving herself extra time to think of something. Wait… she had an idea…

'It was,' insisted her mother. 'Saradomin has certainly made you stupid.'

Jasmine shot her an angry look, but said nothing.

She suddenly, seemingly for no apparent reason, looked up at the ceiling. 'I think I heard something,' she lied.

Her mother stood up, and, as if playing along, said, 'I think it came from your room, I'll go check it out.'

_Dammit! She… oh no…_

'Mother!' Jasmine, desperate, ran forward and pushed her into the chair. 'You've been working hard today and you weren't well yesterday, I'll go see for you.'

'I was perfectly fine!' snapped her mother. 'Just a bit of a cold, Jasmine, you're acting strangely!'

_I shouldn't overdo it, she's suspicious already. _'Mother, it might be something worse!' said Jasmine. 'There's an epidemic of something going round in Lumbridge that has similar symptoms to a cold in the first few days – what if it's reached here?'

'That's rubbish,' retaliated her mother. 'It will not come here!'

'Mother,' pressed Jasmine. 'It's just a noise, don't get so upset. You need to rest, please.'

'I'm perfectly fine!'

'Mother, Lumbridge is so close!'

'Fine!' her mother finally gave up. 'You go see what that stupid sound is! Knowing the state of your room, it's probably a family of rats! That's your Saradomin lot – so unorganised!'

But Jasmine pretended not to hear.

_She was in my room?_

She climbed up the ladder quickly, and, hoping her mother wouldn't follow, finally managed to get into her room. She took out her pouch and put it in her bag, before reaching the bed, and, going down onto her hands and knees, pulled out the cardboard box.

'What's that you've got there?'

_Oh crap_. Jasmine, recognising the voice, turned around. Her mother _had_ followed her upstairs.

'Nothing you'd care about,' Jasmine said, slightly hunching over the box protectively. Saradomin and Zamorak were both a huge deal in the household, especially to Jasmine. If Olivia heard of this, she would roll her eyes and say, 'It's just a bloody cloak, Jasmine!'

'Let me see it,' her mother crossed her arms.

It looked like she was ready to wait forever.

'It's nothing,' insisted Jasmine.

'If it were nothing, why are you hiding it from me?'

Jasmine couldn't answer that.

'Show it to me!'

'No!' Jasmine gripped the box tighter. This was her favourite and most treasured possession; she wasn't going to let her mother get a hold of it.

Too late. Jasmine had forgotten her mother was once a mage. She yelled out in surprise as her mother used a 'telekinetic grab' on the box, and Jasmine was left clutching empty air.

She turned around and saw her mother with her hands on the box. Jasmine involuntarily drew in her breath…

'You were right,' said her mother, after opening the box. 'There's nothing inside.' She turned it upside down. True to her word, nothing came out.

Jasmine stood up quickly. 'What did you do with it?' she almost screamed.

'Do with what?' asked her mother sweetly and innocently.

Jasmine stormed past her and descended the ladder so quickly she missed a rung and fell to the bottom. Ignoring a throbbing foot, Jasmine darted down the stairs.

The temporary pain of the impact began to fade as Jasmine reached the ground floor. She looked towards the fire. If her mother had tossed it on the fire, it was definitely in ashes now. Jasmine took off her bag and sighed sadly as she realised it would be impossible to get it back now.

Jasmine turned around, her anger aroused once more, as her mother descended the stairs after her.

'You burnt it!' she accused indignantly.

'Burnt what?'

'You know fully well!'

'Your Saradomin cloak, right?' her mother asked in an annoyingly polite voice.

'YOU BURNT IT!'

Now her mother was angry as well. 'That scum was warping your unclean mind!' she snapped.

'Zamorak was warping _your_ mind!' Jasmine hated being discriminative, but she was too angry to care.

'Zamorak is red, the colour of fire! Fire gives life! Without the sun we wouldn't live!' retaliated her mother.

'Without water to drink we won't be alive either!' Jasmine shot back.

'You're acting like a brat, Jasmine!' yelled her mother in return. 'Water drowns!'

'Fire burns!'

'Jasmine, _get out of this house!_ And don't come back until you adjust your attitude!'

'I'm not coming back until you adjust _yours_!' Jasmine grabbed her bag, cross. She lifted it onto her shoulders, before striding outside of the house, past her surprised father and brother, both clad in red.

The first thing she did was walk into the Blue Moon Inn. She wanted to know something, and since bartenders were often listening to gossip, she decided to ask the innkeeper here.

'Have you heard anything new?' she asked him as soon as she saw him.

'That would be cheating!' he straightened himself up.

'Huh?' Jasmine said, genuinely confused.

'It would make the game too easy!'

'What… game?'

'The game of Runescape, of course.'

Jasmine decided the man was crackers and walked back out. Looking at her house, she noticed that no one had come out to ask her to go back.

_That's fine with me_, she thought.

She walked up the street, planning to get a new, plain staff, and some runes. She wasn't powerful, but her magic was up higher than most people she knew. Being level sixty-five, she thought she'd be all right for competing in Castle Wars next week. That was about the minimum level of people that competed there, though some people as low as level nine came to attempt as well, but they often found they couldn't do much but repair and operate the catapult.

After about half an hour, Jasmine had bought what she wanted. She settled on using fire strike if she needed to defend herself, and she hoped the runes she had bought would last her the journey, preferably forever.

But she knew that wouldn't happen.

Jasmine had already decided what to do. Fed up and sick of her family, she would travel to Castle Wars; it would take about a week, considering she didn't know the way there, so by the time she got there she would be fifteen already. If she did know the way there it would only take five hours to walk, but she knew she'd get lost in the mountains especially.

Before Jasmine left Varrock she dropped by the bank to withdraw some more money for food, and went back to the General Store to buy a tinderbox and a small bronze axe. Then, buying some paper and using a pencil in her pocket, she scrawled a quick note to her family and stuck it in the mailbox. Happy she had got what she wanted, she had gone to start her journey by the Western Gate.

---

Jasmine knew that if she followed the road long enough she'd come to the gate that separated the normal world from the other side. She hadn't been there before; she needed to pay an expensive toll to pass through it, so she saved as much of her GP as she could in order to be able to get through.

After about an hour of walking through the busy road, she arrived in the Barbarian's Village. She had only been there once, nevertheless she still was surprised by the large cry of a Barbarian as someone decided to attack him or her for training.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!"

'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!'

'Jasmine! Don't scream at me!'

'Holy crap – who said that!' Jasmine looked around wildly.

'Behind you.'

'Oh,' Jasmine turned around. 'Olivia!'

'You mean you didn't recognise my voice?' asked said Olivia.

'Erm, no… sorry.'

Olivia shrugged. 'Don't worry,' said the brunette. 'Anyway, what are you doing here?'

'I ran away from home because I can get into Castle Wars next week and my stupid mother burnt my Sara cloak.'

Olivia gave her a Look. 'That's a bit extreme,' she said.

Jasmine sighed. 'Not if you live in my house, when they're trying to convert you every five seconds,' she said. 'I had had enough. I left them a note anyway.'

'Ah, well,' shrugged Olivia. 'I may as well go back to Castle Wars with you, I just finished visiting my parents in Draynor.'

'Why aren't you there?' asked Jasmine.

'The season just finished,' replied Olivia. 'The next one begins on Monday, that's in five days.'

'ARGH, my birthday's next Wednesday!' exclaimed Jasmine. 'I'm JUST going to miss going into this season!'

'Just don't give your age,' said Olivia. 'And if they ask, just tell them your age and if they make a deal out of it then say you didn't know.'

'I'll just ask,' sighed Jasmine. 'Who won, anyway?'

'Zamorak,' was the short reply.

'I can see my parents now, dancing around the fire at home in wild states of bliss!' said Jasmine sarcastically.

'That's nice. Can we go now?' said Olivia.

'I need a drink first,' said Jasmine. 'Do you know the way to Castle Wars?'

'Roughly,' answered Olivia. 'I can go as far as Camelot without getting lost. There's a huge party room there, and weird people who dance. If there's enough time we could drop in there.'

'Yay,' said Jasmine.

'You don't usually say that,' remarked Olivia.

'We'll go in about ten minutes, then,' said Jasmine.

---

OK, I said ten pages in my LJ, but this is… five pages and a bit. Dammit.

But it's longer than most of my chapters! Yay!

R + R.

6


	2. Chapter 2

Short chapter, but I HAD to update. Sorry for the long wait. **Guilty laugh** Yep. Hope you likey!

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The soft hues of dawn were colouring the blue sky when the biting cold pulled Jasmine harshly out of sleep. Shivering, she drew the thin, sparse material she called a blanket around her, and curled into a ball. _I should have brought something thicker. Stupid. Stupid, me._ A headache interrupted her thoughts. Great, she thought, teeth chattering. The rest of her body was stiff and sore from a night on the hard ground. She cast a glance to her left – Olivia looked like she was sleeping soundly, a tinge of a smile playing on her lips. When Jasmine turned her head back to the front her neck creaked as if on rusty hinges.

Jasmine refused to admit it, but she missed her bed, which, until now, always seemed hard. Her attic room seemed comfy and warm compared to her current environment, just west of the barbarian's village. Stony. Everyone knew that, and the girls were stupid enough to sleep on the hard ground.

How were her family doing now, Jasmine wondered. Would her mother be completely enraged at seeing her note or regretful? How did her brother feel? Her father? Out of all the biased family, her father was the one with the most open mind, even if it was slightly stained with the same descrimination her mother's held. Her mother… well, she _was_ nice when she wasn't spouting religious information. She did love Jasmine. The girl felt a slight twinge of guilt. How would the caring side of her mother feel in comparison to the religious one?

Her father would probably be irritated. He didn't support her decisions either, but he was at least tolerant. He also persisted with reminding Jasmine that her mother did love her. Great, here was the guilt again.

Her thoughts swirling, Jasmine barely noticed when sleep snuck upon her again.


End file.
